Boocock has more than 25 years of industry experience, most recently as executive vice president of engineering at BTI Systems Inc. Before that, he was a co-founder of Catena Networks (an Ottawa-bsaed broadband access startup sold to Ciena Corp. in 2004) and a member of its senior management team. He was also a senior manager at Nortel Networks.

“Jonathan knows what it takes to succeed in the very cost-sensitive, high-volume broadband access arena,” said Jim Hjartarson, CEO of OneChip Photonics. “His experience in developing innovative optical communications solutions, from the ground up, will be crucial as we look to extend our unique PIC technology to the fast-growing data communications market.”

OneChip announced in May that it will make engineering samples of its PIC-based 40-GB and 100-GB receiver chips available for partner testing in the second half of this year. The company also expects to make engineering samples of its 40-GB transmitter optical components and 100-GB single-chip transmitter PICs available after the release of its PIC-based receiver chips.

The company will use the feedback that it receives from these initial engineering sample designs to develop PIC-based optical modules that help remove traffic bottlenecks in data centers and enterprise networks, Boocock said.